RIO+20 The Future We Want

Marc Ona: The Future We Want

"The industrialization of Africa by leaders acting without environmental conscience will be the ruin of us."

Africa has become, over the years, an enormous reservoir of raw materials for industrialized countries and for the unrestrained pursuit of higher economic growth. The ecological and environmental imbalance caused by this obsession threatens the global ecosystem and humanity.

How long will we wait for collective citizens’ awareness of the world to put an end to this mass suicide via pollution and other forms of destruction that sacrifice natural species in favor of hard cash and cents?

The savage destruction of our forest by multinational corporations has caused a resource as mundane as wood being wiped off the planet.

We should use a forum to declare loudly and strongly that if we persist in our current destruction, we will be surprised by nature’s fury, and by then, it will be too late to react.

A strong signal of a warning planet has just been given to us through the tragedy in Japan a year ago where the people of Japan became the victims of the earthquake and tsunami. The Haitians are still bearing the scars of the earthquake that struck their country. Have we already forgotten the hurricane Katrina that hit the most powerful nation in the world? How can we interpret the appearance of the Ebola Virus in Gabon, Congo and Ivory Coast that leaves no chance of survival to his victims?

These signals challenge us to take the necessary measures to correct our behaviors. Nature does speak, but we are remaining deaf. How much longer is this going to last for?

Marc Ona is president and founder of the environmental NGO Brainforest and president of Environment Gabon